Black lives matter

During a visit to Zimbabwe in 1989, Jesse Jackson was walking down the dirt trail leading to Victoria Falls when a group of three African men hunkered in the shade of a scrubby tree stood up to point at him. One asked, “Is this... is this the great Reverend Jesse Jackson?” His fame was global. He popped up in the most unlikely places: negotiating the release of hostages in Lebanon, lobbying for earthquake relief in Armenia, criticizing factory conditions in Japan. A photo spread of his career would show him face-to-face with Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. He hosted Saturday Night Live and appeared on Sesame Street, and he had a talk show on CNN that ran for eight years.

Remember Angela Davis? Few people under fifty do. Was Cambridge University counting on that historical ignorance when it decided to honor Angela Davis with an honorary degree?   In case you, Dear Reader, are a little fuzzy about Davis, I note for the record that the former Black Panther and two-time vice-presidential candidate on the Communist Party ticket with Gus Hall is the recipient of many honors, including the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize.  Cambridge University, of course, has long demonstrated a certain fondness for Commies, as the names “Kim Philby,” “Guy Burgess” and “Anthony Blunt” remind us.

Before I’d established my tiny crew of fellow local moms, I aggressively befriended – or tried to befriend – any woman with a baby who looked vaguely friendly. I’d try my luck in cafes, playgrounds, baby classes, yet with only minimal success (one find, a Cambridge-educated Irish lawyer, "forgot" her wallet on our date, leaving me to pay for her expensive glass of wine).So I clung gratefully to one of my café pickups, Marta, with whom two or three pleasant playdates (or rather: mommy walking dates) had taken place. I had rosy hopes for more as her kid was cute and reminded me of my own. But one day, strolling along the dark and wintry main drag that connected our two adjacent neighborhoods, things took a turn for the ominous.

Five years ago, we watched a man die under the knee of a police officer. The footage of George Floyd gasping for breath wasn’t just horrifying – it was galvanizing. For a brief moment, America stood still, and it felt like we all agreed: this was wrong. This shouldn’t have happened. And something needed to change. But instead of coming together, we fell apart. What should’ve been a rare moment of national consensus turned into yet another front in the culture war. The left veered toward revolution, and the right veered toward denial. And somewhere in the wreckage of hashtags, riots, cable news rants, and billion-dollar DEI schemes, the real moral clarity of that moment was lost. Let’s start with the obvious: what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy.

Five years ago this month, anarchists set on fire my adopted town of Minneapolis in the wake of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd. Now, as President Donald J. Trump has made a triumphant return to the Oval Office, some of the blogosphere are calling for him to pardon Chauvin for his crimes. Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the United States Constitution grants the President the “Power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”  President Trump should respect the verdict of the people and protect his own legacy by rejecting the ignoble calls to absolve the fired officer of his guilt.

So, rest in power, Black Lives Matter Plaza. Mayor Muriel Bowser has at last caved to Republican pressure and is overseeing the renovation of the stretch of Washington's 16th Street NW leading up to the White House ahead of the US's 250th anniversary next year. Demolition of the plaza began Monday near Lafayette Square, where BLM protesters were cleared using tear gas in June 2020, and in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, where an arsonist started a fire in the basement during the protest. These events sparked Bowser’s decision to create a permanent plaza there in solidarity with their cause — protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier — and in resistance to then-President Donald Trump.

Since the 2024 presidential election, America has been braced for violence from the political far-left — and with good reason. Extremists like antifa, the “anti-fascist” group, are explicitly aggressive. They think looting, arson and intimidation are all acceptable, and until very recently they’ve had the support of the establishment. For a decade their liberal allies gave antifa carte blanche to cause criminal damage in the name of “resisting fascism” or opposing racism. So where is antifa now? What is it planning? It’s an understandable concern. The citizens of Portland remember all too well the bouts of rioting and violence by Black Lives Matter-antifa in November 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump.

It was a gray May afternoon in New York City when a thirty-year-old homeless man named Jordan Neely — who had dozens of encounters with law enforcement, suffered from schizophrenia and other mental health issues and was under the influence of synthetic drugs — boarded the F train and began ranting and raving at the straphangers on board. He said he was ready to die, that someone would die today, screaming that he didn’t mind going to jail or getting life in prison. Scared passengers backed away, with one young mother barricading her five-year-old behind a stroller. Witnesses attest to what happened next: a young man headed to the gym, an ex-Marine named Daniel Penny, did what others wouldn’t be brave enough to do in this situation.

Worldwide unrest is great for those in the riot-gear business. Shields and batons have historically cornered the market as the cutting edge in crowd control, but in recent years it’s evolved to include robots, armored trucks and drones. Milipol Paris is the homeland security expo of all expos. This is the kind of giant showroom where you will find law enforcement and private security agents checking out the newest innovations in robot dogs, armored vehicles and unmanned turrets as if they’re going from painting to painting at the Louvre. The Milipol expo comes around every two years. In 2023, you would have seen men plugged into VR headsets killing terrorists with a pistol.

It has not escaped the attention of media observers that the current outbreak of violent campus demonstrations is but the latest in a series of disruptive left-wing movements, starting with Occupy Wall Street in 2012, followed by the Black Lives Matter riots over the summer of 2020 and now the anti-Israel protests. The right, too, has been associated with disorderly conduct — most notably during January 6 and the Charlottesville rallies — but neither of these events were as well-planned or long lasting as what progressives have been up to. And this fact has led many journalists to speculate as to why the American left has become so attached to civil disobedience.

There are probably better ways to start your fifteen-hour work shift than to hear the words: “Fire at the Renton Avenue gas station. Pump still leaking fuel. Possible injuries. Attend scene immediately.”  That was the stark dispatch that came over the radio of the King County Sheriff’s car driven by thirty-two-year-old Deputy Cy Brame, one of 720 law enforcement officers who serve the needs of half a million people living in the sprawling unincorporated areas around Seattle. I recently joined him on a characteristically drizzly early March afternoon on his beat behind the wheel of a black Ford Interceptor SUV. “You’re lucky,” said Deputy Brame, with a thin smile. “The last ride-along I had was here all day without an emergency.

The House of Representatives kicked out its only Jew-ish member today, sending George Santos into the pages of history as one of only a handful of House members to be booted from the body. Former congressman Santos had an eventful second wedding anniversary yesterday, as he held a feisty, fiery press conference to proclaim his innocence — but declined to ask any of his colleagues to defend him against the latest charges. This third attempt at expulsion proved to be the charm for Santos’s foes, who rode the wave of an almost-comedic House Ethics report that alleged Santos spent donor dollars on everything from OnlyFans subscriptions (which he somewhat denied) to Botox (which he basically confirmed).